


Faith

by aohatsu



Series: Fairy Tales, Fables and Faith [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 08:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aohatsu/pseuds/aohatsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first thing Stiles thinks is that it’s cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I have no reasoning for why this exists or why it's taken so long to post it or if I will be continuing this series at all. But since I wrote it...

The first thing Stiles thinks is that it’s cold.

 

The second is that he’s lying underneath the hanging body of a dead pig. “Oh my God,” he yells, and kicks out with his sneakers until he’s pushing his back up against the wall. “What the hell, man, this isn’t cool.”   
  
His ears are ringing and when he lifts a hand to his head, it comes away bloody, and the steady throbbing reminds him of the hit he’d taken from the butt end of a gun that had run out of bullets. Or maybe the hunters just hadn’t wanted to shoot him with wolfsbane-laced bullets, that stuff was pretty dangerous, werewolf or not.

 

Then again, they locked him in a freezer with dead pigs hanging from the ceiling. He doesn’t think they care about him all that much in the long run.

 

He’s startled from his reverie at the sound of a low groan off to the right somewhere, and he jerks around quickly. Stuffed into the corner of the room, leather jacket and all, was Derek Hale. Note, what looks like an almost _dead_ Derek Hale.

 

Stiles spends a valuable moment asking the dead pig, “Why?” before scuffling over and pushing at Derek until he groans again, but slides onto his back. Lots of blood, Stiles thinks, increasingly nervous. He doesn’t think it belongs to any of the dead animals in the room either, if only because Derek has a huge, gaping hole in his shoulder. “Oh, God, that looks like bone, and a lot of blood,” he says. “Why aren’t you healing? Shouldn’t you be healing?”

 

“Shut up,” Derek says, too quiet and broken and less murderous than usual-sounding, which would normally be awesome, yes, progress, except Stiles doesn’t think it’s because Derek has finally recognized his brilliance as a person, more like Derek just doesn’t have the energy to argue.

 

Not good. Not good _at all_.

 

Neither is the hypothermia Stiles is going to catch in this freezer, wearing nothing but a superhero t-shirt and jeans that have one too many holes in them for comfort.

 

Okay, wolf is out for the count. It’s time for Stiles to pick up the slack, ignore the more-than-likely concussion and the blood he’s wiping on his jeans (he needed new ones anyway). He stands up, wobbly and without the depth perception he’s usually so thankful for. Definitely a concussion then. His dad is going to kill him.

 

The room is small, but he should have expected that: it’s a freezer. Cold seeps in from the floor, ceiling and every wall, chilling the dead animals, and the very much alive humans. Does this mean the hunters are butchers in their spare time, or what? Jesus, they better not be cannibals, Stiles is not up for chasing wendigos around Beacon Hills.

 

Derek is glaring at him from the ground where he’s cringing in pain, because there’s a small window-panel at the door and Stiles is trying to see through it. It’s frozen over though, all white and icy, and he can’t barely see anything; a chair, maybe, and a table. He doesn’t see any people.

 

Shivering, he leans back off his tippy toes, and folds his arms, rubbing at them to try and warm up a little. What he wouldn’t give for a roaring fire, fresh pinewood stacked next to it in the living room. He’d be sticking marshmallows on sticks, and his dad would be burning them all one-by-one as he tries getting the perfect meltedness. His mom would be walking through the cabin with hot chocolate in her hands. It’d taste horrible, but neither he nor Dad would tell her that, because her face when she tried it too would too good to pass up.

 

He snaps out of it when Derek growls his name.   
  
Stiles shushes him, and keeps looking around. There has to be some sort of safety ‘unlock’ button, doesn’t there? It can’t be legal to not have some sort of precaution against getting stuck in a freezer.   
  
“Stiles,” Derek growls again, only it’s more of a groan and turns into a cough, and oh, gross, that’s blood coming out of his mouth.

 

“Dude, you look like you’re dying. Why aren’t you healing?”

 

“Stop talking.”

 

And Stiles would, he really would, because his teeth are starting to chatter, except Derek is moving, and oh God, that looks really painful, what is he even doing—oh. “No, no, no, you’re like, dying, do not take that off.”

 

Derek already has one arm out of the stupid jacket, smearing blood on it as he goes. He ignores Stiles and keeps removing the jacket, even though they are, hello, in a freezer. He half-heartedly throws it at Stiles, and then thumps back against the wall, like it literally took more effort to do that than he had in his body.

 

The jacket landed a few inches away from Stiles foot, and he snatches it up, and determinedly walks back the four steps it takes to drop it on Derek. “Seriously,” he mutters, angry on principle of how stupid this is, “you’re bleeding out. You need the jacket more than me.”

 

Derek pants over the difficulty he has sitting, for a minute, before he says, “Wolf. I stay warmer... than you.”

 

And oh, yes, that’s a good point, except Derek looks pretty fragile human at the moment. He glares at Stiles with enough heat that Stiles grumbles and stuffs an arm into the jacket. It’s too big for him, really, but it’s warm and feels good where it isn’t wet with questionably sticky liquids.   
  
Stiles sits—or slumps, falls, whatever—back down in a huff as soon as he zips it up, so high it’s covering his chin. Derek huffs an amused-if-not-annoyed laugh that’s maybe a chuckle that’s maybe a growl, but Stiles will take it.

 

“Seriously, a freezer,” Stiles says after a moment. You’d think if the hunters wanted to kill them, they would’ve just done it. Except if they’re wanting to keep him and Derek alive for some reason, sticking them in a below zero environment was not the smartest way of going about it.

 

Derek groans in a low voice and Stiles risks looking over at the wound again. It actually looks a little better, maybe? He can’t see the bone at least, but there’s still blood everywhere. “Should we be putting pressure on that?” Normally it’s not a big deal, werewolves heal fast enough that it’s not an issue.

 

Derek doesn’t answer, eyes closed like he’s in too much pain to bother with acknowledging Stiles is even in the same room as him. Well, screw that, Stiles thinks, and then winces as he lifts up on one knee and, using the sleeve of Derek’s jacket, wipes some of the blood away. It’s definitely healing, just... way slower than it should be.   
  
“This is going to turn out to be some new type of wolfsbane that does yet more weird things to you, isn’t it?” Stiles asks, more to himself than Derek, only complaining a little bit. He’s not going to think about what happened last time. Or, to be more exact, what almost happened last time. Thank God for Issac, basically, and his really horrible timing. Good timing, whatever, this is not the time to be thinking about past awkward situations due to wolves being high on their version of catnip.

 

Derek hisses when Stiles pushes too hard, and he jerks back. Almost dead werewolf or not, he has no desire to be mauled.   
  
Long silence. Stiles swallows and wipes the blood on the jacket sleeve off on the ground, or tries anyway. Derek isn’t warm anymore. He’s not as cold as Stiles, but compared to the usual heat Scott gives off, he’s an icicle.  
  
“It’s okay,” Stiles says, huddling a little closer to Derek, just shy of actually touching him again, “Scott will find us.”  
  
Derek has enough energy to snort in disbelief, at least. Stiles takes the chance to shove him, and when there’s no retaliation, shuffles closer, so that their sides are pressing against one another. “He will,” Stiles says again. “He was there during the fight, it’s not like he can ignore that we got taken out, right? Unless they got him too, but no, then he’d be here.”

 

Stiles remembers it, throbbing at his temple not-withstanding. Derek hadn’t been with them. It had just been him, Isaac, Scott and Allison, on their way back to Derek’s ghost town of a hideout after lacrosse, so at least the street had been empty when they’d been jumped by a set of hunters. Derek had come barreling in five minutes later, and Scott had taken off just long enough to get Allison safely out of the crossfire.

 

Of course, that had been long enough for Stiles to get knocked out with the butt of a gun, and whatever else happened to Derek and Isaac—“Oh, crap, is Isaac alright?” He hadn’t even thought about it.

 

Derek doesn’t answer again, but his face looks even more unfortunate than before, so Stiles takes it as an ‘I hope so’. If he was, he’d have gotten Erica and Boyd on board, and Jackson... the whole pack would be looking for them by now, they would. And Scott, as horrible a friend as he is when he’s ignoring Stiles for Allison, or worse, _Isaac_ , would never give up on finding Stiles.   
  
“Scott will find us any minute,” Stiles says again, and then again, because he needed to hear it again, and Derek doesn’t seem to be on the positive thinking train right now.

 

Derek moves, or more like twitches, and gravely says, “What if he doesn’t?”

 

But no, the negative train is not allowed to stop here. It is not boarding passengers.

 

“He will,” Stiles repeats, confidently, not leaving room for argument.

 

Derek actually looks at him, clearly struggling with the intense need to call Stiles an idiot. “Why?” he forces out, finally, and oh, he’s growling again. Eventually, Stiles will understand what ticks Derek off. That day is not today.  
  
“Because he—“

 

“Why are you so sure?” Derek coughs out, and oh, more blood oozing. Stiles grimaces and leans back over, ignoring the way moving seems to make him even colder, and the shivering he can’t help. He uses Derek’s shirt to wipe off the blood this time, pressing at the wound until Derek hisses in pain.

 

“I trust him,” Stiles says, finally, still gripping Derek’s shirt. “He’s been my best friend since we were kids.” He can’t stop his teeth from chattering. “I trust him.”  
  
Stiles doesn’t mention the other guy he’d been best friends with as a kid. They don’t talk about that. He’s not sure why, but it’s not... something that feels okay to bring up. But Derek is staring at him, and his face is as hard to read as ever, it is, but Stiles has to look away anyway, ignore the way his heart is suddenly going eighty miles an hour in his chest.

 

“I trust you too,” he says, quieter, and he’s so stupid, so stupid, he didn’t mean to say that. He doesn’t look back at Derek, doesn’t acknowledge the way that it’s true. It makes no sense, but he does. Derek’s made it clear he doesn’t trust Stiles, and they’re only stuck in this freezer together because, come on, bad guys clearly like kidnapping Stiles and torturing Derek, it’s a thing, this is like two birds with one stone. But if Stiles wasn’t Scott’s best friend, if he wasn’t tied into this by somebody else, he has no doubt Derek would never have come anywhere near him when he came back to Beacon Hills.

 

Half the time he’s pretty sure Derek flat out hates him, and the other half, he knows Derek just thinks he’s annoying. Which is fine, Derek’s not a ray of sunshine either, but... Stiles trusts him, because Derek’s a good person. Werewolf or not, Derek makes the decisions he does to save lives, and Stiles...

 

Stiles trusts him.  
  
It’s stupid.

 

It doesn’t change anything.

  
“You shouldn’t,” Derek finally says, after too long of a pause. He isn’t growling, doesn’t seem angry at all. He looks tired, exhausted, like he’s giving up.

 

“What?”

 

Derek doesn’t answer, doesn’t acknowledge Stiles has said anything at all.

 

“Screw you,” Stiles bites back, and pushes harder on Derek’s wound because he thinks the bleeding might be stopping. He knew you needed pressure on this sort of wound. He’s also pretty sure both his and Derek’s fingers are turning blue, and they need to get out of here, soon, or he will have frostbite in places he does not want frostbite.

 

“Do you think I could stand on your shoulders?” he asks, after a minute, breaking his sentence up because he can’t talk straight anymore. There’s a ceiling type thing up there, and who knows if it’ll open or lead anywhere, but they have to try.

 

Luckily, they don’t have to in the end. There’s a loud sound from outside the freezer door, and Stiles jumps up, ignoring his frozen limbs for the sake of a ‘whoop’ and, “Scott is here!” There’s a loud yell, another ‘thump’ noise, and then Derek is struggling to get up, but doesn’t quite manage without Stiles’ help, leaning way too heavily on Stiles’ shoulder for comfort. Derek is heavy, this is not news, but knowing and knowing, you know. He should stop talking.

 

The door jiggles and Stiles yells again, “Scott! In here!”

 

“It’s not Scott,” Derek growls, and Stiles has long enough to, “Huh?” before the door opens and Allison steps in, ripped jeans and bloody lip, and with messier hair than Stiles thinks he has ever seen her with. She also has a crossbow in her hand, so.  
  
There are also about three bodies lying on the ground behind her, and only one of them is still trying to crawl to the door with an arrow in his thigh. Stiles notices this right before Allison is running over to give him a fast hug. Oh, she’s warm, he likes the hugging, as awkward as it is with a half-dead werewolf already half-clinging to him for dear life.

 

She smiles worriedly and asks, “Are you okay? They had you in a freezer.”

 

She glances at Derek and then, with a weird bit of hesitation on Derek’s part, gets on his other side and they help drag him out, past the bodies in the butcher’s shop and out the door, to Allison’s car.

 

“Where’s Scott? Not that you aren’t amazing. I love you, Allison. You are my favorite superhero, honest,” Stiles blabbers. He’s very thankful for Allison and her crossbow; he’d just really like to know if Scott had also been caught by hunters, and if they need to mount another rescue mission.

 

Allison shakes her head and grins. “He’s fine. He was just looking somewhere else for you. The wolfsbane they hit everyone with did something weird. None of the pack can smell anything.”  
  
Except of course right then some little old lady notices the blood before they manage to shove Derek in the car, and because she’s a good citizen, she calls 9-1-1 for them.

 

Yeah, his dad is going to kill him.


End file.
